Naomi Watts Considered Quitting Acting Before She Was Cast In David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’

British actress and producer Naomi Watts opened up in a recent interview about the impact that David Lynch had on her career and her personal life. On the January 21st broadcast of Live! With Kelly and MarkWatts was asked by Anderson Cooper, who was filling in for co-host Mark Consuelos, about the late director. Watts’ response was that she had been seriously considering quitting acting before she had auditioned for Lynch’s Mulholland Drivegoing so far as to state, “I was literally alienating people… My agent at the time said, ‘You’re too intense. You’re making people uncomfortable.’ I’m like, yeah, ‘I need a job.’”

That changed when she met with Lynch to audition for his 2001 film, stating that the director had an intimate way of casting. Watts’ continued to explain, “He sat me down, and he just looked me in the eyes and asked me questions…Most of the time I was like, ‘How do I get out of your way? How do I speed this up?… I’m not funny, I’m not sexy, I’m too old… He just saw me and was able to sort of lift these veneers.’ Watts went on to land the roles of Betty Helms and Diane Sewlyn in Mulholland Drivefrom which Lynch would become a “real mentor and friend” to the actress. Watts ended the answer with expressing how he “really affected so many people, not just the people he worked with but how he viewed life,” furthermore describing Lynch as having “such a big heart, so much purity.”

After Lynch’s passing on January 15th, Watts paid a tribute to him with a sentimental message on her Instagram. She wrote, “The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light…making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even see me when I was so well hidden and I’d even lost sight of myself?”